


All We Are, and All That We Will Be

by Mithen



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: All Star Superman, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-13
Updated: 2007-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-15 03:47:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Batman meets a Superman from the future at four different times.  The idea is taken from hints in a story in All Star Superman (<a href="http://jij.livejournal.com/167359.html">scans here</a>), that I've deliberately chosen to shift to different meanings than those intended.  Ah, the joys of fanfic...</p>
            </blockquote>





	All We Are, and All That We Will Be

_For him, in remembrance of all we are...and all that we will be..._

The first time it happened, eight months after he started his double life as Batman, he was more than half-convinced it was a hallucination. It was a week after he had met the alien hero for the first time, and he hadn't slept much since. He couldn't help but think that meeting could have gone better, but he couldn't seem to figure out how. He was hard at work trying to synthesize Kryptonite, and he felt at some deep level somewhat uncomfortable about doing it, but it was necessary. It had to be necessary. And yet the little bits of sleep he had time to grab were unsatisfying and filled with...unpleasant images.

So when the solid wall of the cave dissolved and a golden Superman walked in, Batman was already fairly certain he had fallen asleep at the computer.

The dream-Superman looked exactly like the one he had encountered last week, but carved of gold. No, not carved of the mineral. The gold seemed almost to be living; it flowed and shimmered mercurially, half-seen patterns of infinite complexity swirling across the surface, patterns that made you think that if you just looked at them long enough, the universe would...make sense...

The phantasm was staring back at him. The shining fists clenched suddenly at his sides and he stepped forward convulsively, then stopped himself. __

_"Bruce,"_ the dream whispered.

For all the strangeness of the form, the voice was the same as the real Kryptonian's, and that made it possible for Bruce to look away. Interesting that he would imagine Superman as knowing his real name, he thought absently, that secret that neither of them had discovered yet.

"Bruce," the voice said again.

Bruce looked back and met the golden eyes. They were the least convincing part of this projection of his subconscious, he thought, unable to look away again. Because where the real Superman's eyes had been angry, wary, and distrustful, the dream's eyes were kind and warm, and...terribly sad.

"I'm sorry," he heard himself say.

The golden Superman made a small choking sound. _"You're_ sorry? Why?"

"I'm sorry I'm trying to synthesize Kryptonite. I wish I could trust you. I can't." This was all a dream, so it was all right to confess. "I'm feeling...very guilty about it. Now, will you leave and let me get some real sleep?"

The impossibly beautiful eyes lit as if from within with some kind of laughter. "Oh. You think this is a dream?"

"It's not?"

The image shook its head. "No. It's me. Me from fifty thousand years in the future, but still me. We finally managed to tweak the technology so I could come here without risking messing everything up. To see you." The golden eyes were fixed on his as if they wanted something, but Bruce had nothing to give them but his regret.

"It seems typical of my unconscious that I'd have to come up with some pseudo-scientific reason why this is possible." The resplendent Superman laughed a little, as if he couldn't help it, and the echoes of that shining laughter made Bruce's lips turn up involuntarily as well. He did sound rather ridiculous. "If I just wanted a manifestation of my guilt I could have done it more simply."

"Guilt?" The apparition raised a hand into the space between them and let it fall again. "You mustn't waste time in guilt, Bruce. Every moment is perfect. The ones where we drink coffee together, the ones where you work on ways to stop me--they're all precious. They all shine."

Bruce laughed out loud this time. "I'm sorry," he said at Superman's look, "I'm trying to imagine the two of us sitting here and drinking coffee like old chums. I just can't do it."

The phantasm's smile was affectionate. "I thought you had a better imagination than that, Bruce." He cocked his head as if hearing a sound from far-off. "I have to go back. I don't know when it will be possible for me to see you again. It may be...a while."

Bruce made cheerful shooing motions. "You've delivered your message from my conscience, you can leave me in peace."

"Get some sleep, Bruce." The image stepped backward, still looking at him, and was gone.

Bruce yawned and stretched. Dozing off at the computer in mid-calculation was not a good sign. If his subconscious was reduced to sending images of a Superman made of metal to tell him to sleep, maybe he'd better get some rest. He made his way up the stairs to bed and slept well for the first time in a week, with no dreams.

The next day he began to work on a better decel line with greater tensile strength. He wasn't giving up on the Kryptonite project, he told himself. He was just...lowering its priority.

 **: : :**

The funeral would be soon. Batman stared at the monitor. He didn't want to go. He didn't want people wondering if he was secretly pleased that the mighty alien was finally dead. He wasn't.

He was...something else.

There seemed to be something tight and twisting in his chest. He hadn't even been there when Clark died. Ever since Jason Todd's death, he and Superman had barely spoken. Nothing ever seemed to come out right. It was always a struggle just to be civil.

 _Had_ he wanted Superman dead? His feelings seemed tangled and frayed with some kind of agony that felt close to hate, close to anger. He should be feeling sorrow that Earth had lost its great protector, not this...looming dark _thing_ that made him want to howl, to batter his hands on the cold stone walls until they cut his hands.

 _He hadn't even been there!_

He hadn't realized he had spoken aloud until a voice answered him. "I never needed you to be there."

Batman whirled, his hands still clenched into fists, to see the image of the golden Superman from his dream of years ago there. "You never needed me--never _needed_ me--?" The image's words seemed to fill him with a horrible blank desolation that he couldn't look at closely.

"You were always there, Bruce, in any way that matters. Even when you were--not physically there. You were with me." The dream-Superman's eyes were different this time, less sad, but somehow harder to look at. "Always."

Bruce sat down hard, unable to process what the illusion was saying, and for a wrenching second he thought he might be losing his mind entirely. "I'm hallucinating," he said to himself.

"I told you before, Bruce. I'm real. From sixty thousand years in the future."

Bruce pointed a triumphant finger at the golden man; it shook only slightly. "Ha! I've got you now. You can't be real, and you can't be from the future. Because you're--you're dead." He was very pleased of his logical deduction. The looming dark thing that made him want to wail backed off a little, hunkering down to look at him talking to himself.

"I'm not really dead."

Bruce snorted. "You looked pretty distinctly dead on the--" ( _hadn't been there!)_ "--on the videotape."

The fantasy-Clark crossed his arms and looked thoughtful. "The death of the body and the death of the spirit are different. The body can die and the spirit can...linger. Held. Waiting. It's not a true death. When the spirit passes...that's the true death. There's no coming back from that."

Bruce stood up from the chair, gripping the computer desk with both hands. "I cannot miss this funeral because I am arguing metaphysical bullshit with a figment of my imagination," he snarled.

He turned to see a smile light Superman's face, gilded glory on his features like a sunrise. "Stay here and talk with me a little, Bruce. I've waited...a long time to talk with you again."

Bruce found himself sitting again. "You're dead," he repeated blankly.

Superman blinked, eyelashes like threads of metal sweeping past shining eyes. "Does that bother you?"

The dark thing wrapped tendrils of pain around his throat and he couldn't seem to speak. "It's the guilt again," he said after a while. "I feel badly that you died while we were on bad terms, so I have created a mental image of you to soothe my guilt and let me believe, for a little while, that you not only have not died, but that you will live forever."

"Not forever," the image of Superman said quickly. "Just...a very, very long time. Even hundreds of thousands of years are nothing compared to infinity."

"So tell me," Bruce said flippantly, to take his mind of the fact that he was missing Superman's funeral to talk to a hallucination, "What have you been up to the last sixty thousand years?"

"Building the Superman Squad, mostly." Bruce raised his eyebrows in polite interest and his imaginary Clark continued, "It's a team of supermen and superwomen from all different eras. My descendants. We work from the Hypertime Fortress, policing the lines of Hypertime and defending reality from chronal threats."

"They're all your descendants? One big happy family?"

The image of a dead man smirked a little. "Well, some of them are arrogant and annoying. They can't all take after me, after all."

Bruce laughed. "See, that's something I'll miss about you, Clark. Your eternal smugness."

The glimmering smile grew wider. "And I'll miss your insulting condescension." The smile vanished as he tilted his head and addressed someone unseen. "So soon? Can't you--" He bit his lip, listening. "No, I understand. Of course." His eyes returned to the present. "I have to go."

"Well, thanks for the hallucination," Bruce said lightly, but the image was striding closer, almost close enough to touch him. The light streaming from him seemed almost palpable; Bruce could feel it on his skin like sunlight and velvet, warm and reassuring. Tactile hallucinations. Interesting. Bruce could see his own reflection in the lustrous skin, broken and wavering. He caught a glimpse of wolfish blue eyes that looked--

He looked away.

"Bruce," Superman was saying urgently, "I'm not a figment of your imagination. I'm real. And I'm telling you, I'm not truly dead. I'll come back." He stepped away, backing toward the cave wall. "I think I'm... _blue_ when I come back?" The image frowned. "Either blue or with really bad hair. I do remember the hair. What was I _thinking?_ " he said bemusedly.

Batman had pulled the cowl on and was tapping on the computer to call up the plane, not looking at the golden Superman. Time to deal with reality again. He could still make the end of the funeral--not publicly, but in his own way. The darkness that made him want to pound at the walls until they ran red seemed to have lightened just enough for him to function, somehow.

Behind him, Clark's voice: "I'll come back to you."

He turned then, but the phantasm was gone.

 **: : :**

By the next time, he had realized that it wasn't a hallucination: the golden Superman had simply known too much about his own return to be imaginary. So when the gilded Kryptonian stepped through his cave wall again, years later, Bruce said, "I see you decided not to repeat the haircut mistake."

"The haircut--" The gleaming Kryptonian looked mystified.

"The last time we talked. You mentioned your...unfortunate choice of hairstyle after returning from the somewhat dead." Superman raised golden eyebrows. "I suppose you might not remember. It was a few years ago."

As always, the time-traveler's voice was unchanged: Clark's reassuringly human voice echoed, "A few years ago. Yes."

"How long has it been for you?"

"The tesserfabric and chronal alignments have to be just right. They line up correctly about...once every ten thousand years."

Bruce felt a shock of amazement. "It's been _ten thousand years_ since the last visit for you?"

Superman smiled somewhat warily. "So, you believe I'm real?"

Bruce stepped forward, holding out his ungloved hand. "Mostly. Take my hand and prove it to me." It was a scientific check, he told himself. Scientific curiosity about how that shifting golden skin would feel against his...but Superman was stepping backward away from him, shaking his head.

"We don't have the technology perfected to safely allow physical contact with other sentient beings. It's risky." The curl above his eye was made of living metal, pouring endlessly through a spiral shape. Bruce wondered how it would feel wrapped around his finger. Slowly, he realized that Clark was staring at him, his golden eyes glimmering. Bruce cleared his throat and turned back to the computer, suddenly remembering what he had been working on when Superman arrived. He felt bitterness in his throat like ashes.

"You have impeccable timing as always. Have you come to berate me?"

"I--no," Clark said softly. "What are you talking about? What's been going on?"

"Oh, nothing much. I'm just slightly kicked out of the League for devising ways to incapacitate each of you." Clark's shining face looked blank. "Babel? Al-Ghul?" Clark shook his head slightly. "Jesus, Clark, I created a strain of Kryptonite that turned your skin transparent and subjected you to excruciating agony!"

Slowly, comprehension came to the golden features. "Oh, _that._ I remember that now, I think." At Bruce's expression he shrugged and laughed. "In the long run, Bruce, it was not that big a deal."

That was difficult to comprehend. Bruce could still hear Superman's agony over his commlink, could still feel the coldness in his gut that had settled there as he realized Clark was going to vote him out of the League. "You've _forgotten_ _it_?"

"Mostly I remember the...happier times," Clark said softly. He looked away from Bruce, and Bruce suddenly realized that from the moment he had entered the cave, Clark's eyes had never once left his. "There are times I would happily feel any of the pain we went through to have the...company of people I care for back."

"You sound lonely," Bruce said without thinking, and the golden eyes snapped back to his. "Don't you have your little flock of superkids around all the time?"

Clark smiled, the indulgent smile of a fond parent at mention of his children. "Oh yes. And they're wonderful. Especially the fifth-dimensional branch, those scamps. But," he said, the smile fading slightly as he looked at Bruce, "It's not quite the same, you know? I'm their ancestor, the founder of the Superman Squad, their leader. They love me, but they...respect me a little too much." A wry twist came to the shining lips. "I do miss talking with my mate, sometimes."

Bruce wondered briefly if he went to see Lois as well. Was he working on making it possible to touch Lois again, to run those shining hands through her black hair one more time? The thought made him oddly uncomfortable. "Is it worth it?" he asked on an impulse.

Clark seemed to consider the question very carefully. "I believe so. The Squad has done amazing things. The good they've done in the universe is immense. And we're so close now, so close to creating the means that will make it all possible at last." He sighed and ran a hand through his hair; it shifted and glowed like suns in the wake of his fingers. "And it's not forever. I do tell myself that. And who knows what will be on the other side? Who knows if maybe, someday, once again..." His voice trailed off and he smiled at Bruce. "But I didn't really come here to talk about myself."

Bruce shrugged and turned back to his computer. "You certainly don't want to talk about _me_. The League will never forgive me for what I've done. You'll never forgive me."

Clark's voice was warm. "Never is such a very long time, Bruce. I've already forgiven you. Trust me."

"I trust you," Bruce said softly. "God knows I trust you, Clark." He looked up to see the cave was empty.

When Clark came a few days later to tell him the League needed him, that they needed to work together to heal the breaches in trust, he could hardly keep from smiling.

 **: : :**

"What crisis am I here for now?" said the warmly familiar voice behind him, and Bruce whirled to see the metallic form standing in a corner of the cave. He smiled, slightly surprised at how easy it came now.

"None at all this time, Clark. You managed to get lucky and pick a relatively quiet time."

"I'm glad. I have...a few things I need to tell you."

Bruce sat down in the chair, pulling his cowl off. "Would you like some coffee?"

A golden smile. "I'd love some."

The shimmering figure looked jarringly incongruous sipping from a chipped "Gotham Knights" coffee mug. "I remember telling you once that I could never imagine the two of us having coffee together," Bruce noted.

Clark's lips curved above the mug's rim and Bruce watched the play of reflections across them. "Are you and he--I--getting along better now?"

A short laugh. "He thinks I'm arrogant, inflexible, and paranoid, and I think he's naive, unrealistic and a bit simple-minded." He took a sip of his coffee. "In other words, I guess we're friends. Of a sort."

"Of a sort." There was laughter in Clark's voice, but it didn't seem to be directed at Bruce. "Well, I'm glad to hear it." He finished his coffee and sighed, putting the mug on the table. "Thank you, that was delicious. We don't have coffee in New Krypton, I'm afraid."

"No coffee? No coffee for...how many years?"

Clark looked down at his hands. "It's been ten thousand years since the last time I visited you. It's been almost a hundred thousand years since I've drunk coffee."

"Are you sure it doesn't just _feel_ like a hundred thousand years?" Bruce said jokingly, trying to distract himself from thinking how very long that was.

"It actually...feels longer, sometimes," Clark said softly, and Bruce found himself unable to speak anymore, hearing the ache in the other man's voice. The shining figure sat motionless for a time, and Bruce watched the patterns glimmer within the golden skin like rainbows on water, gossamer and steel. Then Superman stood up with a fluid motion, tossing his head as if ridding himself of a burden. "The work of my lifetime is almost done, Bruce. I've established the Squad, founded New Krypton, and defeated the chronovore. I'm here now because we finally had two breakthroughs. The first is this." From...somewhere, Superman produced a small rectangular box and put it down on the counter next to Bruce. "It's yours."

The box was made of the same golden material Superman was. It was taller than it was wide, and hollow, with an opening at the top. As Bruce reached out to touch it, he thought it looked rather like a vase.

At his touch, ripples of reaction ran across the box like water, and Bruce had a confused impression of a multitude of spirals and interlocking boxes, all simultaneously _there_ and _not there,_ embedded in it. Then the not-quite-vase stabilized again and became quiescent. "What is it?" The feeling of it was like cold velvet on his hands. He pulled his hand away but still seemed to feel it.

"You'll figure it out," said Superman, smiling. "It's a present from me, and from all the Superman Squad."

"Thank you," said Bruce reflexively, resisting to urge to touch it again and feel that alien texture. "What was the other breakthrough?"

The golden figure stepped closer to the chair in which Bruce was sitting. "We finally perfected the technology to let me do _this_ ," he said, and put his hand down to brush across Bruce's forehead and into his hair.

The golden fingers felt cool, and then warm, and then both at the same time, as they slid through his hair, brushing his scalp, leaving trails of trembling sensation in their wake. Bruce shuddered involuntarily and leaned into the touch, unable to look away from the other man.

Clark bent down and brought his lips to Bruce's.

His mouth was metal and flesh, fire and ice all at once. The kiss tasted like honey and wine, and Bruce opened his mouth to it as if he'd wanted it for years. Clark made a terrifyingly human sound and pressed closer.

For a moment, Bruce tasted the future on Clark's lips, and he found it very sweet.

Superman broke away very slowly, pausing to dip down and plant small, burning kisses at the corners of Bruce's eyes and at his throat as if he couldn't bear to stop. But then he was standing and walking away, the cave wall shimmering behind him. "Goodbye, Bruce," he said, turning to look back.

There were golden afterimages like light in Bruce's eyes, but he could still see Clark's face clearly. Only Clark's face. "Wait," he managed. "Will we meet again?"

A smile of almost unbearable joy and peace, all sadness refined away like dross.

"I can only hope so," Clark said, and was gone.

When the Superman of his own time appeared a few hours later, puzzled and filled with wonder, holding a rose of living gold and light-edged petals, Bruce knew what it was for.


End file.
